Western diplomat on Syria conflict: 'It'll be easy to get a ceasefire soon because the opposition will all be dead'

A Free Syrian Army fighter of the 101 Division, takes a position behind sandbags near the town of Morek in the north of Hama province
REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
The Syrian Civil War has reached a turning point.

Over the past two weeks, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seized several villages north of Aleppo, the country's largest city and one of the last remaining strongholds of Syria's non-jihadist rebels.

The advance cut off Aleppo's anti-regime groups from their last remaining supply lines into Turkey, and put Assad in a position to retake a fiercely contested city that had a pre-war population of over 2 million.

The regime's advances, backed through an infusion of Iranian manpower and heavy Russian airstrikes around the city, come as efforts to resolve the conflict through diplomatic means have stalled in Geneva. And a recent quote from an unnamed western diplomat shows how facile the current diplomacy really is.

It's an astonishing statement that speaks volumes on the current realities in Syria. In mid-2012, opposition forces were claiming high-level defections from the government's Syrian Arab Army, sweeping through major cities, and gaining ground in Damascus.

Now, they've been so decimated that representatives of western governments are comfortable publicly discussing the rebel movement's extermination.

Territorial control of Syria as of November 20th, 2012
Reuters
The quote also reflects a shift in official western perceptions of the rebel movements' capabilities.

President Barack Obama famously dismissed the Syrian rebels as "former farmers or teachers or pharmacists" in 2014, in spite of groups like the Free Syrian Army's success in holding strategic territory and counterbalancing the influence of jihadist groups in the country.

In the diplomat's view, the key to peace isn't sustaining the rebel movement. It's letting Assad and his partners win.

The current military situation in Syria.The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The quote also reflects the west's exhaustion with the Syria conflict, which has dragged on for over four years and killed an estimated 470,000 people.

It could be considered flippant to characterize the death of Syria's non-jihadist rebel movement — which is, after all, fighting a regime accused of serial human rights abuses— as a prerequisite for "an effective ceasefire." But it might also be an accurate reflection of the current mood in the US and Europe.

Fighters loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad celebrate with residents of Nubul and al-Zahraa after breaking the siege of their towns, northern Aleppo countryside, Syria, in this handout picture provided by SANA, the Syrian state-run media organization, on February 4, 2016.
Reuters
In any case, the "ceasefire" the diplomat describes wouldn't come close to ending the Syrian Civil War.

Jihadist groups like ISIS and the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra are still among the more powerful fighting forces on the ground. It could be years before Assad fully consolidates control over Syria's populated areas, and even the reconquest of Aleppo could take the regime months or years.

As the past four years in Syria demonstrate, turns in battlefield momentum can say surprisingly little about where the conflict is actually going. A ceasefire with even a totally decimated rebel movement might not be enough to end the country's conflict.